Facebook now lets you raise funds for your favorite charities

Starting today, Facebook is rolling out a tool that lets you create personal fundraisers for verified charities, along with a way to accept donations from other users without having to send them elsewhere to complete their transactions.

Facebook’s Naomi Gleit told USA Today, “Giving is really personal. It’s one thing for American Red Cross to raise money for American Red Cross. It’s another for a friend to raise money on behalf of American Red Cross. We tend to give to people that we care about.”

On the list of verified charities are Oxfam, The Nature Conservancy and Alzheimer’s Association. Here’s an example fundraising page, complete with a funds goal, information about the project and a Donate button.

The tool is currently available to only about 1 percent of users in the US at present, and they can choose to support any of 100 501c3 nonprofits verified by Facebook. The company will receive 5 percent of the total funds raised, while the charities will receive the remaining 95 percent.

It’ll be interesting to see if this tool helps accelerate fundraising initiatives for nonprofits. Facebook will expand the program across the US in the coming weeks; there’s no word on whether or when it will become available elsewhere in the world.

We’ve contacted Facebook to learn more and will update this post if there’s a response.